VOICES
The Quiet Newsroom
And the Shiny New Press
When I recently paid a visit to the newsroom of my hometown paper, the Springfield, Massachusetts, Union-News and Sunday Republican, I politely asked if I could put my jacket and bag down on a nearby desk. A reporter looked up and told me that the desk had been unoccupied for a couple of years, so of course I could. I looked around. The editors were in their morning meeting and there was only that one reporter on the large "city desk" side of the newsroom, which had more than thirty terminals.
Through the windows I could see construction workers putting the finishing touches on an addition that will house a new German-made press and a new distribution facility, a stunning $30 million project to prepare this medium-size newspaper for the future. The major investment comes after a $2.75 million purchase of new computer systems for the editorial, advertising, and business departments and last summer's purchase of thirteen digital cameras for the photo staff. This is a newspaper willing to invest in capital improvements. Its owners, the Newhouse family and their Advance Publications Inc., have a yearly revenue of $4 billion.
The Newhouses bought 40 percent of the stock in this family-owned newspaper in 1960 and then fought in court for six years to gain control of the rest. They acquired a rich piece of journalistic history dating back to 1824. The paper enjoyed a national reputation and was routinely read in the White House in its first century of existence. "In many respects, the Springfield Republican stands as the greatest achievement in American journalism," said The New Republic in 1915. The magazine also called the paper's newsroom "the best training school in the country." Charles Dow, founder of The Wall Street Journal, and Tom Wolfe, the reporter turned novelist, were just two of the luminaries to come out of its newsroom. In terms of impact, the paper enjoys a monopoly in a circulation area that encompasses dozens of small- to mid-size towns.
My own connection to the paper runs deep. I delivered it in middle school, worked in the sports department during high school, and worked in the news department during and after college. While other journalists under thirty discuss their "dream newspaper" with cjr for this issue, I feel that in some ways I have already worked at mine. For a young reporter, this was it.
But the days of the dream newsroom in Springfield may be over. I recently spent three days there, only to discover that while the Union-News is quite willing to invest in machinery, it is not investing in the quality of reporting and writing that those machines reproduce. The Newhouse Way has been wonderful for editorial content in papers like the Star-Ledger in New Jersey or the Portland Oregonian. The company grants a lot of autonomy to its publishers, who, in turn, can give editors the freedom to shape a paper without measuring everything against the bottom line.
Which raises questions about Springfield. For the last couple of years, the newsroom has been unable to replace staffers who leave. Thus, an enterprise editor who left in March 2000 has yet to be replaced; a medical reporting beat remains vacant; a statewide education beat created in 1999 disappeared; two day-shift city editors do the work that four used to do; a photographer who died in a motorcycle accident won't be replaced; a police reporter might have to cover meetings with one ear while listening to a scanner with another. Investments that editors made in identifying and nurturing young talent have largely gone to waste because the young reporters are leaving as soon as they can. Hired to work part-time at 29.5 hours, four days, with almost no benefits, some of these reporters produce a week's worth of stories in three days since one day is a weekend day. Most of them put in many more hours than they're paid for. Predictably, a newspaper somewhere else offers them a full-time gig and off they go, one recently saying "there's no future for me here." They're not replaced and another reporter picks up the responsibilities. "I feel bad for the community," says Bill Zajac, a veteran reporter. "They're not going to receive the coverage they're used to and local coverage is our bread and butter." The paper's slogan remains: "Where the news hits home."
I remember my first days in the Union-News newsroom in 1994: it was loud and bustling with life and there seemed to be a lack of space. Some desks had to be shared by two reporters. Circulation was near 110,000 daily and more than 150,000 on Sundays. Today, it's approximately 89,000 and 134,000 respectively.
It's not that reporters aren't happy about their shiny new press, sheathed behind a wall of glass to be visible to the public. It's just the stark contrast: $30 million for the new machines and their fancy addition, $0 for additional staff in the newsroom. After attending a morning news meeting, I spoke to Wayne Phaneuf, the executive editor, who's been with the paper since 1969. He emphatically denied that his newsroom is somehow being shortchanged as a way of helping to pay for this state-of-the-art press. "The truth is that we need the new press to stay alive," he said. "You have to upgrade for the future." When asked to quantify the newsroom shrinkage, Phaneuf took a long pause and then said staffing was strong when compared to local television news staffs. "The days are gone of not paying attention to the details," he said. "There was a laissez-faire attitude at newspapers for a while." Because he has a leaner staff, Phaneuf says he uses regional "wraps" more, in which reporters in different areas contribute to a longer piece, which is handled by a single editor and then used in every edition.
Indeed, through the Herculean efforts of devoted reporters and editors, the paper's quality has not dipped as precipitously as its circulation. And, of course, the nation is in an economic downturn. But reporters like Zajac are concerned. "No matter where you work, whether it's in a newsroom or another business, if you lose workers and the company's workload is not being reduced, you can't expect the product to not be a little diminished."
I have a young reporter's perspective and I'm not a businessman, and for all I know, Larry McDermott, the editor-turned-publisher, may have a new plan for the new year. But he declined to talk to me when I visited his office for a scheduled interview or to respond to questions via e-mail. So I still want to know: Why enhance the quality of the printing but not the reporting that gets printed? Readers buy a local newspaper because of local news. If the publisher is unwilling to invest in the newsroom, why should readers invest time and money in the product?
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